like spilled ice-cream (I might just melt)
by zeddess
Summary: When Itachi first met Sakura, she upended curry over his precious, costs-more-than-your-tuition, Gucci sweatpants. The second time it happened, he realized two things: 1) Haruno Sakura was a thorn in his side, and 2) his soulmate also apparently had two left feet.


The smell of burning ramen permeated the air—and unfortunately, Itachi's nostrils.

He groaned into his pillow, refusing to believe that Deidara could be such a nuisance at (he blearily glanced at his phone) nine in the morning.

A pot clattered to the floor with painful resonance and Itachi's ensuing migraine almost made him retch on his plaid-patterned bedsheets.

"Deidara, I will dismember you," he hissed through the throbbing bassline playing in his skull. If Nagato wanted musical inspiration, he had it.

"I think I burnt the spatula," came the weak reply, and Itachi whipped his head around—ow, bad idea—to mutinously glare at Deidara's grimacing face. The latter gingerly held up a melted rubber spatula, or at least what was left of it.

"Why were you using my spatula to make eggs?" Itachi demanded.

"I didn't! It fell in the pot!" Deidara protested, as if insulted by the doubt cast upon his nonexistent cooking skills.

"Why did it fall in the pot?" he asked wearily, squeezing the back of his neck in a desperate attempt to alleviate his headache.

Too bad the same couldn't be done for his roommate.

Deidara ignored his question unrepentantly.

"Do you want ramen or nah?" he said.

"No thanks," Itachi grimaced, his wince deepening as Deidara shrugged and unloaded the dry noodles on his plate. Ugh, disgusting. Ramen wasn't supposed to be drier than the Sahara.

He'd just make himself toast and pray that the cafeteria wasn't out of food today.

By the time he'd washed up and emerged from the fogged up shower, clad in a black sweater appropriate for the freezing weather, Deidara had migrated to the couch with his plate of godawful ramen. Itachi moved to the kitchen counter while someone on Game of Thrones got eviscerated on their shared flatscreen, Deidara avidly watching as he shoveled noodles into his mouth.

After laying out his trusty jars of peanut butter and jam on the countertop, Itachi opened the fridge, stomach grumbling and head aching.

The fridge was missing bread. Itachi clicked his tongue and peered on the top of the fridge. No bread there either. He searched through their meagrely stocked cupboards; not even a pack of instant coffee mix was seen.

"Deidara," he groaned, resting his forehead against the cool exterior of their rattling fridge. "Did you feed the birds all our bread?"

The clucking from their window confirmed his fears. A gaggle of pigeons happily pecked at the crumbs of bread painstakingly hand-torn for optimal beak-sized bites, laid out neatly on the feeding tray Deidara had bought for their pesky, bacteria-infested visitors.

"Sorry," came the distinctly insincere answer.

Shaking his head, Itachi grabbed his wallet from the coffee table, making sure to block the flatscreen with his body as he did so. Deidara's chagrined cries followed him out the door, audible even as he clicked the door shut behind him.

His stomach pitifully rumbled, and he slipped on his glasses, regretting his decision to pull an all-nighter yesterday as his temple throbbed. Mouth dry and mood generally sour, Itachi meandered down the long white hallway. Maybe it was the aura he was emitting this morning but the rest of his neighbours veered clear of him, mumbling greetings hesitantly. Not that he minded; it was a welcome relief from his incorrigible roommate's incessant prattling.

The cafeteria was thankfully only a block away from his dorm, situated in the middle of campus between a cluster of department buildings. At this time of the morning, a gaggle of students was steadily trudging to the cafeteria's doors from the Business Department.

Itachi, majoring in computer science, felt sympathy wash over him at their beleaguered faces. His earliest class started at eleven, and while he was a perpetual early bird, he preferred spending the few hours he had in the morning in solace, instead of listening to an uninterested professor monotously drone on and on at seven a.m.

Wading through the throng, he lined up at the food counter. His eyes spotted the semi-full pot of coffee, internally rejoicing.

"...and then you're supposed to plug the numbers into the formula and you've got your total fixed cost! Pretty simple."

Economics majors, Itachi noted disdainfully. He wondered if Sasuke had even shown up to class today.

He peered over the girls standing behind him, catching no sight of any perpetually stone-faced young men, and pursed his lips.

His younger brother was truly a nuisance. Sasuke was intelligent, but also overconfident to the point of arrogance. He supposed all business majors were similar in their pride (their father being the prime example, CEO to one of the five largest investment banking firms in the world), but he couldn't fathom paying tuition and refusing to at least attend for the sake of getting his money's worth. Wasn't that economic efficiency?

"Rice with some curry, dear?" asked the food lady, holding up a paddle.

"Yes, please," he nodded, holding out his tray.

"...you can borrow my notes, I guess, if you're still stuck," the girl behind him chattered. Such generosity. "Just don't spill anything on them like last time!"

"I said I was sorry!" her friend whined as the lady deposited the rice on Itachi's plate.

"Here you go, dearie," the lady smiled, scooping out curry and moving the spatula towards his plate.

"Sorry doesn't replace my ruined no—ACHOO!"

Itachi squeezed his eyes shut in a silent prayer.

He opened them, took a glance at his rice and curry splattered shoes, and then glanced over his shoulder at the girl wedged between his back, the counter, and the lady's outstretched hand.

Curry rolled down the leg of his once-pristine black sweatpants.

"I... I..." the girl gaped in horror, shaking obnoxious pink hair from her pale face as she spluttered.

"Please remove your hands from my waist," Itachi gritted out.

She instantly pulled away from him, and he noted that it had been a hideous, lime-green arm cast that had been poking into his spine.

"I'll get your clothes cleaned for you," she proposed with a wince.

"I'd rather not strip in public," he cut her off. "Thank you for the offer."

"That's... not what I meant." She blinked in shock.

Her friend cringed behind her, pulling the pink-haired girl back.

Itachi merely inclined his head, reached over the fussing food lady's arm and grabbed the semi-full pot of coffee.

He would settle with this, for now. Apparently the food lady considered his trade-off acceptable, for she didn't protest when he strode out of the cafeteria with the pot in hand, shoes squelching with every step.

He'd almost made it to his dorm building, firmly ignoring the stares, when his little brother popped up.

At times like these, he regretted asking his parents for a sibling, no matter how pure his child-self's intentions were.

"Itachi, is that curry?" Sasuke inquired, dumbfounded.

"Of course not," Itachi deadpanned.

"It looks like curry," his brother argued.

"If it looks like curry, smells like curry, and tastes like curry, what else could it be?" Itachi snapped. Dumbfuck.

"Why do you have curry on you?"

He genuinely questioned Sasuke's intellect.

"I was craving excitement this morning," he replied, brushing past Sasuke and nodding at a giggling Naruto Uzumaki, finally entering his dorm building.

Deidara merely raised a brow when Itachi shuffled into their shared living space, wise enough to keep his mouth shut.

Throwing his sweatpants into the laundry and wiping his legs off with a stray football jersey (it was orange, so Deidara's), Itachi contemplated if his health was worth attending classes today. It was already shaping out to be a horrid Monday.

But then he looked down and saw tendrils of mauve ink on his wrist, stark against his pale skin.

He was skipping class, fuck it.

* * *

 **A/N: I'm just putting this out there because I'm not in the mood to write anything hardcore/lengthy these days; tell me what you guys think!**


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